Every once in a while, media outlets like to publish features on the “shocking” revelation that certain conservative personalities aren’t heartless monsters after all (perhaps out of a desire to appear less one-sided). Today’s example comes from the Daily Beast, where Matt Latimer introduces readers to a kinder, gentler Ann Coulter than they’re used to:

When informed she could not participate in a political conference if she kept a commitment to speak to a group of gay Republicans, Ms. Coulter told organizers just what they could do with their conference. Noting that she speaks to all kinds of groups whose views she does not necessarily agree with—“the main thing I do is speak on college campuses, which is about the equivalent of speaking at an al Qaeda conference”—Coulter, in her own style, stood for something that conservatives are supposed to believe in: the free exchange of ideas. Few, of course, have exercised that particular privilege with more vigor than the woman who famously labeled Katie Couric “the affable Eva Braun” of the liberal movement.

Well, okay, maybe “gentler” was a poor choice of words, but you get the point. For Coulter, protecting marriage is an important political issue, but it doesn’t extend to hating homosexuals and/or people who disagree. Ironically, that’s not the case for the activists on the other side.

Lately, in fact, Coulter has been making a habit of getting on the bad side of the right’s Dwight Schrutes, even at the risk of alienating some of her book buyers and website subscribers. She was, for example, an early and outspoken opponent of the Obama birther movement, calling its adherents a collection of “cranks.” And in response to commentator Bill Kristol’s haughty demand that Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele resign because Steele criticized the military surge in Afghanistan, Coulter turned the tables. “Bill Kristol Should Resign,” she wrote, thus fearlessly taking on one of the Grand Poobahs of today’s GOP and provoking a needed debate within the conservative movement over the dangers of supporting every military action at every time under every circumstance.

Ann’s attack on Birtherism was indeed an important stand against idiocy on the fringe Right, and it showed yet again that the Right is more principled and responsible than the Left. Her defense of Michael Steele, however, left much to be desired, because, among other reasons, the bit about “supporting every military action at every time under every circumstance” was a transparent straw-man. Last time I checked, we were involved in a grand total of two wars, both of which Coulter supported—hardly a large enough sample size to determine whether or not “neo-cons” support a state of “permanent war.”

[O]ne of the carefully guarded secrets of Ann Coulter world is how much she is not hated and—dare one say it—even liked by many within the dreaded liberal elite. Well-credentialed members of the mainstream media privately extol her. Among her friends is the decidedly unconservative talk show host Bill Maher, on whose cable program she frequently appeared. “Unlike so many people in America, she was not afraid to get booed,” Mr. Maher once said of his pal.